Flamethrower - Maggie Estep [45]
It took her a good five minutes, but Ruby was finally pulling out of the parking spot when she heard a squealing sound and her car lurched unnaturally forward. Ruby’s chest banged into the steering wheel, winding her. She gasped for air then looked into her rearview mirror, where she saw a blue Honda with a dark-haired man at the wheel. Ruby opened her door to get out, saw the Honda backing up, and realized it was going to try running her over. She jumped onto the sidewalk in time to see the Honda plow into the spot where she’d been standing, nicking her car door in the process.
“Hey, motherfucker!” some girl yelled on Ruby’s behalf.
Ruby glanced at the license plate as the blue Honda sped away, but her eyesight wasn’t the greatest and all she saw were the first two letters, BK.
“Did you see that shit?” A young woman, the one who’d called Ruby’s attacker a motherfucker, had rushed over to Ruby’s side. “That fucking guy was trying to hit you!”
Ruby was flooded with adrenaline. She collapsed onto the lip of the sidewalk, held her head between her hands for a moment, and took a few deep breaths.
“You okay?” The girl had come to sit next to Ruby.
She glanced at the tough-looking young girl. The girl was wearing a muscle-T showing skinny arms.
“Yeah, I’m all right,” Ruby said. She put one hand to her breastbone. She still felt a little funny there, but not as though anything was broken or pierced.
“I’m calling the cops.” The girl had fished a cell phone from her pocket and was dialing.
“Thanks,” Ruby said.
As Ruby listened to the girl reporting the incident, she tried to make sense of what had happened.
“I’m Victoria,” the girl said after she’d closed her phone.
“Ruby. Thanks for calling the cops.” She shook Victoria’s hand.
“They should get here sometime next week.” Victoria smirked. “What was that all about? Someone trying to take you out?”
“It looked that way, didn’t it?” Ruby said. “But I don’t know why. I didn’t realize anyone had it in for me.”
“You piss off an ex-boyfriend or something?” Victoria asked. “I had one come after me in a car one time,” she added without waiting for Ruby’s answer. “Motherfucker didn’t even know how to drive. Got his auntie’s car and tried to run me down but hit a parked car instead. And all I’d done was tell him he wasn’t getting no pussy no more.”
“Some men don’t take that well,” Ruby said.
“No shit.” Victoria shook her head. Her long silky dreadlocks moved.
Normally, Ruby thought dreadlocks looked stupid on white people. In spite of being blond, Victoria somehow pulled it off.
Victoria didn’t seem to have anything better to do, and she hung around as Ruby inspected the Mustang. It had a serious dent but seemed structurally intact, as far as Ruby could tell.
The cops showed up after about fifteen minutes, by which time Ruby had heard most of Victoria’s sexual history. And it wasn’t pretty.
Ruby popped a Fireball, and one of the cops, a young Spanish guy with a spindly mustache, stared at Ruby’s mouth as she sucked the candy. Ruby spit the Fireball out. Both she and the cop watched it roll away into the gutter.
It was a long half hour while Ruby answered the cops’ questions and filled out forms. She knew she should mention that this wasn’t the first time she’d seen the blue Honda, but she didn’t. It would have led to too many additional questions she didn’t want to answer. When the police were done with her, they left her there, alone with Victoria, who didn’t seem to have anything better to